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I say YES do it, learn COBOL and Mainframes, don't listen to others who say Mainframe is a thing of the past, it's here to stay. Just talk with leading position
by nix23 6y ago
I say YES do it, learn COBOL and Mainframes, don't listen to others who say Mainframe is a thing of the past, it's here to stay. Just talk with leading positions in Insurance/Finance government maybe?, they are more then happy to find someone who is motivated and eager to learn, AND they have the money and time to support and build-you-up (Training mentors certs licenses etc.).
- foobarian 6y agoMainframes are alive and well, they just have new names like AWS, GCP, Azure...
- 0x445442 6y agoI would say from a career path perspective this world seems to offer some advantages in the area of cumulative knowledge acquisition. Whereas the typical career path in The Enterprise one is faced with technology churn every few years. Being in The Enterprise, I find it quite frustrating dealing with the new shiny every few years when there's rarely objective analysis behind being made to do so.
- pbourke 6y agoIs it possible to study mainframe programming independently?
- kjs3 6y agoYup. You can get some hands-on using the Hercules emulator, but it's running old versions of the OSes due to licensing. That can give you the basics, tho, because Mainframe OSes tend to be pretty stable over time. Beyond that, IBM has a ton of educational resources you could leverage. At one time they had a program where you could get an account on a mainframe, but I don't know if they do that any more. Udemy has some mainframe/Cobol tracks. I assume other on-line training does as well. There are a number of colleges that have mainframe focused degree tracks (Columbus State University has one). These days, you could probably find one that does it on-line.
- nix23 6y agoAnother source: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the-mainframe https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education/master-the...